Bob Collins
The next time we have a discussion of transportation issues in Minnesota, let’s keep this picture in mind. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
By Bob Collins
Bob Collins retired from Minnesota Public Radio in 2019 after 12 years of writing NewsCut and pointing out to complainants that posts weren’t news stories. A son of Massachusetts, he was a news editor 1992-1998, created the MPR News regional website in 1999, invented the popular Select A Candidate, started several blogs, and every day lamented that his Minnesota Fantasy Legislature project never caught on.
Here’s another installment of our occasional series,’Why Baseball is Better Than Football.’
Today’s reason: Because you don’t ever hear about people being stabbed over giant inflatable baseball players. Read more →
Few places on earth seem to do autumn as well as northern Minnesota and Wisconsin.
In a perfect world, it would last longer.
Alas, it is not a perfect world. Read more →
A report from the Minneapolis Bike Coalition says black bicyclists are stopped by police more often than their white counterparts. Read more →
Karl Randa has cancer and, from the sound of things, the prognosis isn’t great. It didn’t help when someone broke into his family’s home and stole many possessions. It didn’t help when the family was faced with losing their home. It helped when his friends stepped in. Read more →
Ben Hildre says he wouldn’t have done it if the gorilla costume he normally wears for some annual team tradition hadn’t been damaged. Read more →
You probably figured as soon as Donald Trump blamed his sexual exploit talk on ‘locker room talk’ that former Minnesota Viking Chris Kluwe would weigh in on life in the Vikings locker room to set him straight. Read more →
As a fan of a team that will likely never win a World Series in my lifetime (a distinction, we suspect, you Chicago Cubs fans are about to lose), you’ll find no bigger supporter than me of the notion that baseball is the perfect game.
Sure, we joke from time to time that it’s like a religion, but we don’t really mean it. Read more →
The kids in Alvin Junior High School in Texas learned the lesson we all have to learn sooner or later and made the best of it. Read more →
We’re rather eating up the opportunity to hear behind-the-scenes stories afforded by the new book from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The book is published by a division of CBS, so CBS News has gotten two days of exclusive interviews out of the deal.
Read more →
It was 1918 when activist and socialist Eugene Debs made a speech in Canton, Ohio urging resistance to the World War I military draft. So President Woodrow Wilson — Debs ran against him in 1912 — ordered him arrested and charged with violating the Sedition Act. He went to prison.
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The PiPress says the meters are more expensive than those in Minneapolis, even though the downtown is generally devoid of retail. The rate per hour next year will go up again — to $2.25 under Mayor Chris Coleman’s plan to ‘maximize’ revenue.
At what cost to the city? Read more →
This has been in my head today as I see tweets from important people who are shocked to learn there’s “gambling in this establishment.” That as recently as August 2015, when I originally wrote this, some male journalists — at the liberal The Atlantic, no less — couldn’t figure out what the big deal was. Read more →
Raymond Haerry, 94, of Rhode Island, didn’t do much talking in August on his experience on the USS Arizona the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
Read more →
There are two amazing takeaways from this NOAA video of a “hurricane hunter” airplane flying into Hurricane Matthew. Read more →